Ronald Rael

Interventions of the Border Region

A lecture by Ronald Rael Moderated by Lola Ben Alon

Ronald Rael is a designer, architectural researcher, author, entrepreneur, and thought leader in the fields of additive manufacturing and earthen architecture. He is the Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture and Director of the Masters of Architecture program with a joint appointment in the Department of Architecture, College of Environmental Design, and the Department of Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is the author of Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (University of California Press 2017), an illustrated biography and protest of the wall dividing the U.S. from Mexico (featured in a TED talk by Rael), and Earth Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), a history of building with earth in the modern era. Rael San Fratello, the studio he co-founded with architect Virginia San Fratello, was named a 2014 Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York—one of the most coveted awards in North American architecture. Most recently, Rael San Fratello has installed “Teetertotter Wall,” three pink see-saws on the US-Mexico border, named 2020 Design of the Year.

Rael’s work has been published widely, including the New York Times, Wired, MARK, Domus, Metropolis Magazine, PRAXIS, Thresholds, Log, Public Art Review. His work has been included in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the FRAC Centre, and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya.

Tech Talks is a new annual event series hosted by the Building Science and Technology Sequence at GSAPP focusing on the implications of materials, cities, and ethics. The talks are followed by a Q/A panel and showcase work on healthy materials, integrated city systems and sustainable activism in order to solve the profound technological and human challenges of the 21st century.